The Pierrot Project is proud to present ‘The Pierrot Studio’, a new exhibition of simultaneously visual and musical installations by pairs of contemporary artists and composers. Each pairing will explore thematic elements of Schönberg’s seminal song cycle Pierrot Lunaire and combine painting, sculpture, performance and sound. The new compositions written for each installation will be performed by the Dr K. Sextet at the opening of the exhibition. The Pierrot Studio is generously supported by the Britten Pears Foundation and the Golsoncott Foundation.

Tim A Shaw, Gaze, 2016

Tim A Shaw, Head, 2016

Tim A Shaw and Ewan Campbell will take Schönberg’s study, or studio, as their starting point and will construct a skeleton, life size timber frame replica of this room, based upon photographs of the composer at work. Rather than presenting a stable or fixed piece of architecture, the installation will be much more akin to a psychic, virtual or imagined shell. The immersive room will include re-imaginings of Schönberg’s ‘musical’ sketches and painted self portraits.

Sara Naim, Schönberg’s Vibrations 1, 2016

Sara Naim, Schönberg’s Vibrations 2, 2016

Sara Naim and Chris Roe will create a poetic and transient rendering of Schönberg’s moonscape in Pierrot Lunaire. Roe’s composition will be amplified beneath a shallow vessel of milk. As the speakers reverberate with the varying tones and frequencies of the music, the liquid will begin to ripple and embody the sound through the various geometric patterns that appear in it. Naim will illuminate the milk with a strobe every 13 seconds in reference to Schönberg’s notorious triskaidekaphobia. She will create a series of frozen, sculptural moments, between which the audience will wait in darkness, absorbing the sound without vision.

Jörg Obergfell, Percussion, 2016

Jörg Obergfell, Violin, 2016

Jörg Obergfell and Stef Conner will look specifically at the absurdist nature of Pierrot Lunaire and create a series of masks and musical motives around the various archetypal Pierrot characters. Conner’s compositions will be interwoven around a central, slowly developing theme of laughter. Obergfell will translate these characters into more or less abstract mask forms that draw inspiration from both folk costumes and modernist aesthetics.

The Pierrot Studio is generously supported by the Britten-Pears Foundation and The Golsoncott Foundation.

The Pierrot Studio is programmed by The Pierrot Project, an arts collective that encourages interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, composers and musicians.We have hosted various exhibitions and events since 2014. The founding members of the collective are Niamh White, Ewan Campbell and Alex Wilson.